This is the 22nd iteration of the UEFA Champions League Group Stage (ie, since 1992-93). Title-holders are of course Bayern Munich, the Bavarian giants who defeated their biggest rival, Borussia Dortmund, in the thrilling 2012-13 UEFA Champions League Final in London at Wembley on 25 May, by a score of 2-1. It was the first all German final in the competition (ie, since 1955-56).

On the map itself, in the center of the map page, the locations of the clubs which have qualified for this year’s CL Group Stage are shown on a large map of Europe. Surrounding the large map are enlarged inset maps of each of the 19 countries which have teams involved in this season’s group stage. The club crests on the inset maps are sized to reflect each club’s average attendance – the larger the crest, the higher that club’s average attendance is. Average attendance is from each club’s home matches in their domestic league last season (2012-13). I got the figures from European-Football-Statistics.co.uk/attendances.

Listed on the left-hand side are 2012-13 average attendance figures (from domestic home league matches), then each club’s stadium capacity (for 12/13 league matches), then each club’s percent-capacity. For this year’s UEFA CL map, I have dispensed with percent-change in attendance. I decided the space was better used for listing each club’s stadium capacity, and each club’s percent-capacity for 12/13. Percent Capacity = Avg. Attendance divided by Stadium Capacity.

Here are all the clubs in the 2013-14 Champions League Group Stage that filled their stadium last season by over 90.0 percent-capacity…
-100.0: Bayern Munich, at 71,000 per game in the 2012-13 Bundesliga, and the 6th-consecutive season that the current Champions League title-holders’ percent-capacity figure has been at exactly 100.0%, at their space-age Allianz Arena in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
-99.8: Borussia Dortmund, at a world’s-best 80,520 per game at Westfalenstadion [aka Signal-Iduna Park] in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany in the 2012-13 Bundesliga.
-99.6: Manchester United, at 75,530 per game at Old Trafford in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England in the 2012-13 Premier League.
-99.5: Arsenal, at 60,079 per game at Emirates Stadium in North London, England in the 2012-13 Premier League.
-99.1: Schalke 04, at 61,171 per game at Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany in the 2012-13 Bundesliga.
-99.0: Chelsea, at 41,462 per game at Stamford Bridge in West London, England in the 2012-13 Premier League.
-99.0: Manchester City, at 46,974 per game at the City of Manchester Stadium [aka the Etihad Arena] in Manchester, England in the 2012-13 Premier League.
-95.8: Ajax, at 50,490 per game at Amsterdam Arena in Amsterdam, Nord Holland, Netherlands in the 2012-13 Eredivisie.
-93.5: Juventus, at 38,600 per game at Juventus Stadium in Turin, Piedmont, Italy in the 2012-13 Serie A.
-93.0: Bayer Leverkusen, at 28,120 per game at BayArena in Leverkusen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany in the 2012-13 Bundesliga.
-91.1: Paris Saint-Germain, at 43,239 per game at Parc des Princes in the 16th arrondissement in SW Paris, France in the 2012-13 Ligue 1.

Stadium capacities for league matches will inevitably be a bit less than the full capacity (ie, total number of seats+standing-room terracing, if allowed) in a given stadium – for safety reasons to separate rival fans. For UEFA matches it will very often be less than that as well (ie, more rival-fans-separation). In the last 4 or 5 years, Wikipedia has been pretty good about keeping track of stadium capacities – they can often vary from year to year. But there are errors, such as at the en.wikipedia.org page on the 2012-13 Belgian Pro League, where it fails to include the Anderlecht venue’s standing capacity – the club’s Constance Vanden Stock Stadium has 21,000 seats (that’s what its capacity is listed as {here), but that fails to account for the 5.3 K to 6.9 K of available standing-terrace capacity there (like it is listed at the de.wikipedia.org page on the stadium, here). Soccerway.com is also good on reporting the stadium capacity statistic. Actually, Soccerway.com is pretty much alone among major association football media outlets (that I know of) in that they go that extra mile and list stadium capacities AND they do the math, listing percent-capacities [at each league's table, at the top, far right of the table]. But sometimes a club is playing in multiple venues (like CSKA Moscow is currently/ see note at bottom of attendance data list on the map page), or sometimes a club has had renovations or rebuilds at their venue which changes, sometimes drastically, their stadium capacity and their actual crowd sizes (like with respect to Marseille the past 2 seasons in Ligue 1/ again, see note on the map page below attendance data). So venue-capacity and thus percent-capacity is a tough one to stay abreast of. I arrived at the venue capacity figures on the map page by referring to the en.wikipedia.org page, and sometimes to the de.wikipedia.org page, and a few times the ru.wikipedia.org page… then to the Soccerway.com capacity figure from last season. If there was a discrepancy, I delved further until I got to the bottom of why there were different venue capacity figures listed. So if there are errors in any of the 32 clubs’ 2012-13 home domestic league capacity figures here, I apologize. But no source out there (that I know of) has definitive numbers for all this. Ligue 1 site is by far the best at reporting venue-capacities and percent-capacities, and thanks to the excellent Ligue 1 official site I had already known about the rebuild (for Euro 2016) of Olympique Marseille’s venue – Stade Vélodrome – and its ongoing capacity shifts (as well as at Saint-Étienne’s venue), and was able to reflect that here and previously in my 13/14 Ligue 1 map and attendance chart {here}. {Here is the Ligue 1 site’s section on attendance – Ligue1.com/attendance}. Merci, Ligue Un!

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Thanks to the 80+ folks who commented on my 2012-13 UEFA CL Group Stage map last year when it was uploaded by niallgg at Redddit.com {here, http://en.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/znqa7/201213_champions_league_group_stage_attendance_map/}. Special thanks to the person who suggested that percent-capacity listings would be useful (user name: oldaccount), and to the person who actually took the initiative of listing all the stadium capacities and percent-capacities of clubs in the Group Stage last year (user name: therealmorris). For a couple years now, I have been including percent-capacities in most of my maps of European leagues, and including them here in the Champions League was a detail that was long overdue.
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Thanks to Roke at commons.wikimedia.org, ‘BlankMap-Europe-v4.png‘.
Thanks to european-football-statistics.co.uk, for attendance figures.
Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org (as well as UEFA CL pages at de.wikipedia.org and ru.wikipedia.org), ‘2013–14 UEFA Champions League‘.
Thanks to Soccerway.com for stadium capacity information.

Teams from Scotland playing in Europe for 2013-14 (with 12/13 Scottish Premier League finish noted):
Scotland’s very poor current UEFA coefficient holds at 24th {see this ‘UEFA coefficient/Current ranking‘ (en.wikipedia.org)}. And unless Celtic rallies from a 2-goal deficit (see next paragraph), that 24th-place coefficient will probably plummet further.

#1 – Celtic, of course, won the league title yet again in 12/13, and qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Champions League second qualifying round, where Celtic defeated Cliftonville (of Northern Ireland) 5-0. In the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round, Celtic then defeated Elfsborg (of Sweden) 1-0 aggregate. Then in the final qualifying round before the CL Group Stage – the CL Play-off Round – Celtic were drawn to face Shakhter Karagandy (of Kazakhstan). Because their stadium in Karaganda holds only 19,000, Shakhter opted to host Celtic in the Kazakh capital-city of Astana, at the 30,000-capacity Astana Arena. The long journey, deep into central Asia, that the Celtic squad had to take to get there, seems to have taken its toll (the distance between Glasgow, Scotland and Astana, Kazakhstan is 4782 km. or 2,970 miles). In the first leg on 20 Aug. 2013, Celtic fell 2-0 to the back-to-back Kazakhstan Premier League champions, in front of a sell-out crowd of 29,950 – see this, ‘Celtic succumb to a shock defeat by Kazakhstan’s Shakhter Karagandy‘ (PA via theguardian.com/football). There has never been a Kazakhstan-based club in the UEFA Champions League Group Stage, and unless Celtic manager Neil Lennon can rally his troops, Shakhter Karagandy will become the first Kazakh side in the CL Group Stage (ie, since 92/93), as well as becoming the furthest-easternmost club to to play in the competition (Rubin Kazan of Tatarstan, Russia, who were in both the 2009-10 and 2010-11 UEFA CL Group Stages, hold that distinction, currently). Here is another article about Celtic’s CL-qualifier predicament, ‘Celtic have chance of redemption in Champions League qualifier – The board of directors have been criticised for failing to reinvest but need Neil Lennon’s current squad to deliver‘ (by Ewan Murray at theguardian.com/football/blog). [Note: Celtic did qualify for the UEFA CL Group Stage by beating Shakhter Karagandy 3-0 at Parkhead on 28 Aug.]
#2 – Motherwell finished second in 12/13 (following a 3rd place finish in 2011-12), and the Steelmen qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League third qualifying round. However, Motherwell fell to Kuban Krasnodar (of Russia), 0-3 aggregate.
#3 – St. Johnstone finished third in 12/13, despite having the lowest crowds in the league, and qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League second qualifying round. There, St. Johnstone defeated Rosenborg (of Norway) 2-1 aggregate. In the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round, St. Johnstone faced FC Minsk (of Belarus), and lost 2-3 aggregate, in penalties, to the Belarussian side.
#7 – Hibernian finished seventh in 12/13, but they qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League second qualifying round by virtue of being runners-up in the 2012-13 Scottish Cup (which was won by Celtic, who had already qualified for Europe), thus Hibernian took the spot. Hibernian then lost to Malmö (of Sweden) by the appalling score of 0-9 aggregate.

The only other club in Scotland besides Celtic that won silverware in 2012-13…
St Mirren FC, of Paisley, Renfrewshire (which is on the western-edge of Greater Glasgow), won the 2013 Scottish League Cup, defeating Heart of Midlothian 3-2, before 44,000 at Hampden Park. Congratulations to St Mirren.

Promoted and relegated in 2012-13…Relegated: Dundee FC were relegated straight back to the second division in 12/13. No other club (such as St Mirren or Hearts) were really troubled by relegation worries as Dundee finished bottom, 13 points from safety. [Dundee had gained promotion back to the Scottish top tier for the 2012-13 season only because of Rangers' implosion in the Spring of 2012, and the Glasgow giants' subsequent banishment to the fourth division as Rangers (Newco).]Promoted: Glasgow-based Partick Thistle won promotion to the Scottish top flight (see below).

Promoted to the Scottish Premiership for the 2013-14 season – Partick Thistle FC (their first appearance in the Scottish top flight in 9 seasons).
Partick Thistle are from NW Glasgow and are nicknamed the Jags. They wear red-and-yellow-jerseys (this season in a vertical-stripe pattern), the over-exuberance of that color-scheme being off-set by a rather dignified black-thistle-in-disc crest. Partick Thistle have won 0 Scottish titles, 1 Scottish FA Cup title (in 1921), and 1 Scottish League Cup title (in 1972). Their highest league finish was in 3rd place, which Partick Thistle did 3 times – in 1947-48, in 1953-54, and in 1962-63. From 1902-03 all the way to 1974-75, Partick Thistle were a top flight club. The modern era of Old Firm dominance in Scottish football in general and in Glaswegian football in particular has been really bad for Partick Thistle. Since the mid 1970s, Partick have played much more seasons outside the Scottish top flight, with their nadir being the 2 seasons they spent in the 3rd tier from 1998 to 2000. During the last, brief spell that Partick Thistle were in the top flight, which was a 2-season spell from 2002 to ’04, the club averaged 5,553 that initial season back in the SPL, and then 4,710 when they fell back to the second tier in 2004. Partick Thistle averaged 3,614 per game last season [2012-13], as they won the Scottish First Division comfortably (in the end), by 11 points over nearby rivals Greenock Morton. Back in the top tier for 2013-14, Partick Thistle have drawn 7,822 in their home opener versus Dundee United; then they drew 6,540 on a Friday night v. Hearts – which makes a 7,181 average gate so far. Partick Thistle will probably draw between 6 K to maybe 7.5 K per game, depending on how they do this season. They won’t have near the relegation worries one might normally expect, because Hearts have been docked 15 points for entering administration (plus being slapped with a transfer ban). If Partick Thistle do stay up this first year back, they stand a chance to possibly grow their fan base a bit, seeing as how the blue half of the Old Firm – Rangers (Newco) – still have 2 more seasons to get promoted back to the Scottish Premiership.Below, Firhill, home of Partick Thistle, in the northwest of Glasgow in the Maryhill area (Maryhill is a former borough with a population of approximately 52,000)
Photo and Image credits above –
Photo of small badge from http://www.teamwearscotland.com/partick-thistle-replica-store/402-partick-thistle-open-t-shirt-.html.
Photo of fans arriving at Firhill fromptfc.co.uk/media/photo_galleries/match_galleries/2012-2013/partick_thistle_v_greenock_morton_10_04_13.
Aerial image [via satellite] from bing.com/maps (Bird’s Eye view).
Interior photo of Firhill by Robert Poole at flickr.com/photos/robertpool.
Exterior photo of Firhill by LordHorst at en.wikipedia.org, ‘File:Partick Thistle Firhill Stadium.JPG‘.
13/14 PTFC home kit illustration from ‘Partick Thistle F.C.‘ (en.wikipedia.org).

2012-13 – a banner year for pro football in Wales.
Of the 20 clubs in the Premier League this season, 2 are based in Wales – the newly-promoted Cardiff City, and the third-year-Premier League-club Swansea City AFC, both of South Wales (and separated by only 55 km. or 34 miles). It is the first time in the history of the English 1st division (which was established in 1888-89) that 2 Welsh clubs are playing in the top flight at the same time. This will be the 16th season in the top flight for Cardiff City (Cardiff City’s total seasons spent in the 1st division: 1921-22 to 1928-29 [an 8 season spell]; 1952-53 to 1956-57 [a 5 season spell]; 1961-62 to 1962-63 [a 2 season spell]; 2013-14). This will be the 5th season that Swansea City are playing in the top flight (Swansea City’s total seasons spent in the 1st division: 1981-82 to 1982-83 [a 2 season spell]; 2011-12 to 2013-14 [a 3 season spell so far]). No other Welsh club has played in the English top flight, but Wrexham spent 4 seasons in the Second Division from 1978-79 to 1981-82; while Newport County (I) played the 1946-47 season in the Second Division. {To see a post I made a couple years back about the 6 Welsh football clubs which are in the English football league pyramid, click here.}

More positive news for Welsh pro football can be seen in the fact that last season, Newport County (II) of South Wales won promotion to the Football League. So after a 25-year absence, the city of Newport, Wales again has a club in the Football League. Newport County accomplished this by defeating Wrexham (of North Wales) in the 2013 Conference National Play-off Final at Wembley. Congratulations to Newport City AFC and supporters of the Exiles. And congratulations to the the Bluebirds’ faithful (I refuse to call Cardiff the Red Dragons)…for their club’s first top-flight-promotion in 51 years. And congratulations to 20%-supporter-owned Swansea City, and its fans, for winning the League Cup, and for demonstrating that playing attractive passing football in the first division – and actually staying up and winning silverware – can still be achieved by modest clubs from relatively small cities. Swansea is a pretty small city to be having a successful first division club, and now Swansea City are advantageously set-up to become the first Welsh club to qualify for a European competition {see this, ‘2013–14 UEFA Europa League/Play-off Round‘.

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The smallest cities to have an English 1st Division football club (since 1946-47)Please note: all populations discussed below are not city populations, but rather metropolitan-area populations (which are also known as Urban Areas, and which are also known as Built-up areas). Why? Because there are not walls around these cities. People who live outside, but still nearby, any given city can and very often do attend home matches of a club in that city. Besides, some clubs (like Grimsby Town) don’t even play in the city or borough they are named after. This exercise is to look at what sort of population each club has as its potential catchment area. If I were to use populations from just within the city-limits of all these settlements, it would not accurately reflect the total population from which the club could reasonably expect (or hope) to draw upon as ticket-paying customers.
Here is my data source for metro-area populations – Source of data:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom.
The Swansea Built-up area is the 27th-largest in the United Kingdom, with a metro-area population of only around 300,000 {2011 figure; see the chart I made further below}. (Actually, it might be surprising to some that Swansea’s metro-area is slightly smaller than the metro-area of Newport, Wales.). At present [2013-14], the only Premier League club from a metropolitan-area smaller than Swansea is Norwich City. The Norwich, Norfolk Built-up area has a population of around 213,000, and is the 38th-largest in the UK. It must be mentioned that Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire – home of just-promoted Hull City AFC – is slightly larger than Swansea, as is Sunderland, Wearside – home of Sunderland AFC. Hull has a metro-area pop. of around 314 K, making Hull the 24th-largest metro area in the UK; Sunderland has a metro-area pop. of around 335 K (that figure does not include any part of the Newcastle metro-area), making Sunderland the 21st-largest metro area in the UK.

In the past and recent past (going back to the post-War period [from 1946-47 on]), there have been 8 First Division/Premier League clubs from cities smaller than Norwich (ie, smaller than around 200,000). Below are listed the smallest cities to have an English 1st division football club since the post-War period (1946-47 to 2013-14), with each club’s total seasons and their last season in the top flight noted, and current metro-area populations listed…{all figures from the following link unless otherwise noted – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom}.
-Swindon Town, 1 season in the 1st division (in 1993-94): Swindon, Wiltshire is the 40th-largest built-up area in the UK at 185,000 metro-population currently;
-Ipswich Town, 26 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2001-02): Ipswich, Suffolk is the 42nd-largest built-up area in the UK at 178,000 metro-population currently;
-Wigan Athletic, 8 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2012-13): Wigan is the 43rd-largest built-up area in the UK at 175,000 metro-population currently;
-Oxford United, 3 seasons in the 1st division (last in 1987-88): Oxford, Oxfordshire is the 45th-largest built-up area in the UK at 171,000 metro-population currently;
-Burnley, 52 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2009-10): Burnley, Lancashire is the 54th-largest built-up area in the UK at 149,000 metro-population currently;
-Blackburn Rovers, 72 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2011-12): Blackburn, Lancashire is the 56th-largest built-up area in the UK at 146,000 metro-population currently;
-Grimsby Town, 12 seasons in the 1st division (last in 1947-48): Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire is the 58th-largest built-up area in the UK at 134,000 metro-population currently;
-Carlisle United, 1 season in the 1st division (in 1974-75): Carlisle, Cumbria is about the 108th-largest settlement in the UK at around 73,000 {that and its city-size-ranking is from 2008, obtained here (citypopulation.de/UK-Cities)}.

Chart: Metropolitan-area populations in the United Kingdom – the 40 largest Built-up Areas in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). With clubs in the 2013-14 Premier League listed.

This chart was uploaded onto reddit.com/soccer by iam8mai, one day after I posted it… here is the thread – http://en.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1k9hoh/premier_league_team_population_size/. Thanks to all the 90+ folks who commented there, and thanks to those who spotted my errors, and thanks to that St Mirren fan [portaccio] who pointed out that Motherwell should have been listed in the list of clubs currently in the Scottish 1st division which are located in Greater Glasgow, which he did after he pointed out to the other (disgruntled) St Mirren fan that Paisley is indeed officially considered part of Greater Glasgow].
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#1 & #2 – Paris Saint-Germain & Olympique de Marseille qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Champions League Group Stage as 2012-13 Ligue 1 champions (PSG) and as 2012-13 Ligue 1 runners-up (Marseille).
#3 – Olympique Lyonnais (aka Lyon) finished third in 12/13, and qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Champions League Third qualifying round; Lyon play Swiss side Grasshoppers (on 30 July & 6 Aug.).
#4 – OGC Nice finished fourth in 12/13, and qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League Play-off round (seeding and team to play TBD).
#5 – AS Saint-Étienne finished fifth in 12/13, and qualified for the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League Third qualifying round; Saint-Étienne play Moldovan side FC Milsami (on 1 Aug. & 8 Aug.).
#6 – Lille LOSC finished sixth in 12/13, and did not qualify for Europe.
#7 – Girondins de Bordeaux, though finishing 7th in 12/13, qualified for the group stage of 2013–14 UEFA Europa League, as winner of the 2012–13 Coupe de France.